


Anchor Point

by BootsnBlossoms



Category: James Bond (Craig movies)
Genre: Firestarter!Q, M/M, Magical!Q, Pre-Relationship, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-28
Updated: 2016-10-28
Packaged: 2018-08-27 14:32:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,574
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8405209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BootsnBlossoms/pseuds/BootsnBlossoms
Summary: The office was filled with the sounds of fingers snapping as Q rhythmically brought fire to life in his hand. The bright flashes of heat ignited as he clicked his fingers together only to be extinguished when he squeezed his fist closed. Wisps of smoke curled away, floating lazily to the ceiling. He picked up the phone. “What?” M snapped, distracted and impatient.Onscreen, Bond walked away from the test, shoulders taut with pain and willfulness.Q smirked. “Give me Bond.”





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Seth_Lecter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Seth_Lecter/gifts).



> HAPPY BIRTHDAY [SETH](lecters-reckoning.tumblr.com)!!!!!! I hope you love it <333333 Sorry it's quick and ends abruptly, but _someone_ didn't give me much notice. *waggles eyebrows*
> 
> Thanks to [zooeyscigar](http://zooeyscigar.tumblr.com), aka [rayvanfox](http://archiveofourown.org/users/rayvanfox/works) for the quick beta. You're the best. *hearteeyes*

Q sat back in his dark office and watched with fascination as Bond — legendary, over-confident, over-trained, quietly brilliant, and most successful agent in MI6 — collapsed in a breathless, miserable heap. The pull-ups had been impressive while they’d lasted, but it wasn’t M’s pointless ‘tests’ that kept Q’s sharp gaze focused on the monitor. It was the paradox. Bond was both defeated and determined, broken and burning, and Q was _fascinated_ .

The office was filled with the sounds of fingers snapping as Q rhythmically brought fire to life in his hand. The bright flashes of heat ignited as he clicked his fingers together only to be extinguished when he squeezed his fist closed.

Could Bond be exactly what Q needed? He looked down at the flames on his fingertips, the familiar pain of his too-wild magic stinging his skin and singeing the edges of rational thought. He squeezed his fist again and the fire was snuffed out. Wisps of smoke curled away, floating lazily to the ceiling.

A flicker of movement on the screen caught Q’s attention again. Bond was moving to stand, and, with a look of pure stubborn determination, clenched his jaw and rose from his painful recline under the exercise bar. Q reached out and dialed M, eyes glued to the screen.

“What?” M snapped, distracted and impatient.

Onscreen, Bond walked away from the test, shoulders taut with pain and willfulness.

Q smirked. “Give me Bond.”

 

~~~

 

“I don’t think you understand, Merrick. Bond is going to fail. Why do you think I gave him _this_ mission despite his frankly disturbing marksmanship scores?” M glared down at the tablet on the desk, the results of Bond’s tests lit up in heartless graphics on the screen. “He’s a man with nothing left to lose. He’ll take down the architect of our little disaster because he has no other reason to keep moving forward. He’ll die trying or at the moment of success, just to be bloody dramatic about it.”

“Then what could you possibly have to lose, letting me have him for an anchor?” Q retorted. He shifted in his seat, trying and failing not to feel like he was running out of air. He hated it down here in the tunnels, where oxygen had to be forced to live. The weight of cold and unignitable stone above his head was stifling, and M’s hard stare only added to the crush. “I need someone who is just malleable enough to be useful, but with an iron core that means I won’t be able to break him.”

M grimaced. “Iron, Merrick? Have you been reading witch lore again?”

“Tungsten, then, Aunt.”

“He’s just human, you know,” M warned. “Despite the rumours and his remarkable ability to resurrect himself, he really is just a human.”

Her expression turned that odd mix of protective and fierce she reserved solely for her orphan agents, and Q tried not to let himself feel annoyed. It was no one’s fault but his own that he wasn’t part of that sad little circle — he’d been an orphan when she took him after his mother died, and he’d been given the opportunity to train as an agent. But he’d been sixteen, heartbroken, and enraged in way that made his magic nearly uncontrollable. He knew that his aunt would take that power and use it to burn down entire cities, and as tempting as the thought was at the time, Q couldn’t bring himself to be used like that.

M didn’t begrudge him the choice to attend university for engineering instead of becoming one of her agents, though. She’d taken him in anyway and taught by example, remaking him in her image. He’d watched, fascinated, as every morning before work she wound control around herself like a steel bar, pushing her magic so far inward that it didn’t leak out even in the worst crises. As soon as she was gone, Q would try to copy what she’d done, muttering the same chants and lighting the same candles, repeating the rituals over and over and over again until his aunt got home fourteen hours later. She’d find him collapsed on the floor in the circle she’d constructed, bleeding from his nose but still trying.

The memory of her stepping over him to pour herself a drink on those days made him smirk as he watched her ponder his request. No sympathy, but no pity, either. Just example and expectation.

“I know he’s human,” Q said, leaning back in his chair as he thought about Bond’s shattered expression. “Isn’t that the point? Someone I can’t steal power from, someone who is nothing but neutral blood and bone?”

M’s eyebrows rose slightly, and Q felt himself flush under her gaze.

“It’s not what you’re thinking,” he said.

“I should think not,” M huffed. “An emotional attachment to him would be far, far more dangerous than you’re ready for.”

“I’m not one of those foolish young men who thinks love solves anything, and you know that,” Q said. “And this has nothing to do with emotion. He needs something to care about, to invest in. I need — ”

M cut him off with a tight wave of her hand and a narrowing of her eyes. “You’d need to forge a connection with him, and he’s not known for his friendships. Just flings that tend to end bloody. And if you sleep with him, you risk alienating whatever relationship you might have otherwise been able to forge, anyway.”

Q felt his ears burning with something that had nothing to do with his magic.

“Are you prepared to deal with him appropriately? Redirect his attentions? Ensure that the friendship means that he will get as much support from you as you from him? Christ, Merrick, simple friendships are complicated enough and you don’t even have any experience with those.” M shook her head.

“That is why you know it actually has a shot of working.” Q pointed out. “We’re starting at zero base.”

M sat silently, hands folded in front of her on the desk. Her eyes were fixed on Q, though he knew that her attention was directed inward. She was thinking, calculating, using her own power to feel along the possibilities until she found whatever path presented the best chance of success. Q waited patiently, hoping her gift was allowing her to see enough of the future to offer him the reassurance that he was right.

He should have known better than to expect anything more than a short nod. “Fine.”

Q took a deep breath. “Thank you.”

 

~~~

“I’m guessing this is not official,” Q sighed as he stared at the map in front of him.

“Not even remotely,” Bond said.

“So much for my promising career in espionage,” he joked. On one hand, Q was delighted that his subtle but hard work in grooming Bond had rewarded him with this sort of trust. On the other hand, what the actual fuck was happening? Who the hell was Silva? Was he really just a former member of the orphan crew, or was he something more? Either way, how did M not see this coming? How could she not warn him? He just needed a hint. Something. Anything.

She didn’t answer his silent plea, but he felt something shift. It stole his breath and made his hand tremble when he set his mug down. M had made a decision, sitting in uncharacteristic silence while Bond stole her away to Scotland, and the weight of it was enough to swamp Q’s sixth sense with cold finality. He’d been expecting something like this since his Uncle died, depriving M of her anchor, leaving her in pain and wanting it to end. But now? He wasn’t ready.

“M…” he started, hesitant and, for the first time in years, scared.

“Don’t, Merrick.”

Q felt his hands clench into fists so tight that the press of nails to skin drew blood.

“What is it?” Bond asked, voice barely betraying his surprise.

“What’s happening?” Q asked, voice cracking over the comms in a way that had nothing to do with a bad connection.  “What did you just decide? Let me fix it. I can fix it, I’m sure.”

“You’re doing fine, Merrick.”

Q stopped breathing for a moment, her words as close to praise as she’d ever come. It was just long enough for his aunt to instruct Bond to cut communication.

~~~

The days after M’s funeral passed in a blur of hard decisions, an intense focus on work, and absolute silence. Q didn’t know what to do after losing the most important person in the world to him, so, for lack of other ideas, he didn’t do anything different at all.

He woke up every day and armed himself with an absolute control that fit tighter and harder than his usual spells. He told himself it was because he was both unusually emotional and still anchorless, so he needed the punishing reinforcement. And if, sometimes, when he was all but writhing in pain at the bands of energy that he’d restricted himself with, he acknowledged that he deserved it for letting his aunt down, well… No one needed to know that but him.

Bond, perceptive bastard that he was, seemed to have figured out that something was going on with Q beyond the simple grief of a person who had lost a friend. Being restricted to the homeland for a few days in the wake of such a taxing mission apparently meant that Bond had too much free time. He had taken to coming down to Q Branch and watching with all-too-perceptive eyes while Q did his best to ignore him.

All the excitement of finding someone who might be strong enough to be his anchor had vanished in the wake of M’s death, and Q decided that the best thing to do for now was... nothing.

M was dead. Q burned on the outside from his self-imposed restriction spells and on the inside from too much untapped power, feeling a timer ticking down inside him that he couldn’t stop.

~~~

“Bloody buggering _fuck_ ,” Bond cursed, fingers slipping in his own blood as he tried to find purchase on the slick metal bottom rung of the ladder. “If you have any alternatives to my climbing nine meters with a dislocated shoulder and a sliced basilic vein, I’m all ears.”

“One moment, please,” Q replied, sounding nothing but detached against the quiet clack of keys. Bond fought the urge to curse again, not only because he didn’t want to give away his position in the vast, echoing tunnels of the underground, but also because Q’s response would be no less passionate than before. He took a step back, grimacing at the slide of dress shoes in sticky muck, and carefully wrestled himself free of his dress jacket.

“Any time now,” Bond encouraged as he ripped the lining of the jacket free and tore it into strips. “I’m only bleeding out in a _sewer_. But no rush. Take your time.”

“Oh, please. I distinctly heard the sound of you making a tourniquet from your Hunstman. You’ve got at least an hour.”

“I didn’t like this jacket anyway. It was a little too tight in the waist.”

“Wasn’t that the point?” Q asked. “To show off your assets and attract O’Banion’s attention? I thought it did the job nicely.”

“I’m sure my tailor would be happy to hear that,” Bond replied. He frowned as he dropped the jacket and wrapped a strip of cloth tightly above his elbow. Q’s words were right for flirtatious banter, but the tone was off. He wiped his hands on his trousers and looked up again at the ladder. “I’m sure he’d be happy to duplicate his efforts, if I were given a good enough reason to ask.”

“Motion detectors indicate that O’Banion is between you and the closest secondary exit. No use. You’ll have to make due with the ladder.”

“Right,” Bond sighed, disappointed but not surprised. “Any thought as to what I’m going to encounter when I reach the top?”

“O’Banion’s partner, Elsa.”

“Fuck,” Bond cursed as he grasped the lower rung again. “I did mention that my gun was destroyed, right?”

“Run over by a field tractor before being being chomped on by a shire horse, was it? Honestly, what is it with you and the local fauna?”

“Animal magnetism,” Bond grunted as he pulled himself up the ladder. “Obviously.”

“What, your aura just screams ‘eat my equipment’?” Q chuckled, then paused. “Oh. That was _bad_. I feel like I should apologize for not thinking that one through. Too easy. Far, far too easy.”

“I can think of a few ways you can make it up to me,” Bond offered.

“You’ve got Ireland’s most deadly assassin on your six and her psychotic, bomb-making partner waiting for you at the top of that shaft you’re so slowly climbing,” Q helpfully pointed out. “We can talk about reparations for bad punning after you get back.”

“Fair enough,” Bond agreed.

~~~

Bond stood silently at the edge of one of the larger Q Branch working spaces, watching the Quartermaster move from table to table as he directed the tasks of three of his engineers who were working in the field. He was calm, collected, and professional, advising the agents individually without even a hint of the humour he’d shown Bond a few days ago. It was like watching a machine, heartless in its efficiency and cold in its detachment. Though Bond had mourned the ease of their interactions during the Silva mission, he hadn’t realised that what he had now was still so much more than anyone else. At least he still got to see a little bit spark that had almost gone out after M’s death.

It was nearly three o’clock in the morning and this particular lab space – an electronic devices construction lab, Bond thought – was empty except for the two of them and the voices of the engineers over the comms. It was a small space, less than three by three meters, and each of the four walls had a large LCD covering most of the surface. The rest of the wall space was covered in shelves which were lined with plastic drawers full of components. The long, narrow workbenches were littered with projects in various stages of completion and decorated with score marks, burns, and other telltale signs of experimentation.

But Q wasn’t building anything as far as Bond could tell. He was coding. Though Bond was proficient in most computer languages, the characters on the screen were moving too fast and were too complex for him to keep up with.

So Bond kept his gaze focused on Q instead. He was dressed in perfectly tailored brown slacks and a pale blue shirt whose only sign of thirteen hours’ wear was the rolled up sleeves. But despite his immaculate clothing, Q looked anything but well put-together. Stress was obvious in every line of his body, from the hunched shoulders to the tight lines of his face that, if Bond didn’t know any better, seemed to speak of physical pain.

His observations were brought to a sudden end when Q made a sound of pure fury, all the more shocking in the wake of his recent silence, and threw his keyboard against the wall. The plastic shattered against one of the metal shelves in an explosion of keys and wires, and it jolted Bond from his reclining position by the door.

“Q?”

Q turned to look at him, the mix of fury and devastation in his expression making it clear that his sudden fit of anger had nothing to do with whatever he was working on or the murmuring voices of the field engineers. Q closed his eyes and shook his head, then turned dejectedly back to the screen.

Bond walked over to Q, who stayed frozen in the middle of the room, and carefully put his hand on Q’s shoulder. Q didn’t flinch, and he didn’t pull away.

“Can I help?”

The fury melted from Q’s expression until there was nothing remaining but desperation. As much as Q’s eyes begged for something Bond couldn’t interpret, however, Q shook his head.

After only a moment’s debate, Bond decided to ignore Q’s rejection. He gently took Q’s wrist and watched him for any sign of fear, pain, or anger. But to his surprise, Q actually relaxed. His shoulders dropped and his eyes closed, and whatever tension had held him so painfully taut seemed to loosen its grip. Bond let out a breath and waited for Q to open his eyes again before speaking.

“Breakfast?”

This time, Q nodded. He tapped his earpiece. “Danielle? I need a break. Take over for me?”

“Of course. Enjoy your day, sir. Get some rest,” Danielle, Q’s second in command, answered.

“Thank you,” Q said, nodding absently. He tapped the earpiece again, tucked it in his pocket, and gave Bond a tired look.

“Eggs?” Bond offered.

“If this your idea of reparations, I’m going to have to taunt you more often,” Q said with a small smile.

“Rashers and toast, too, I think,” Bond replied with an answering smile.

 

~~~

It was several weeks later when something finally shifted. It had been a terrible couple of days when Q hadn’t even dared light a match for fear of losing control. He was too wrapped up in the agony of his own making to talk, eyes tearing up from the burning of his own suppressed magic and the choking weight of his spell-enforced control, when Bond found him standing in the middle of his lab. Bond didn’t bother with the barstools or food, that time. They only made it as far as an open patch of wall before Bond had his arms around Q, pulling him to the floor to sit between his legs. It was only the stillness and the lack of something to focus on that made Q realise he was shaking and that the tears had finally slipped free to run down his face freely.

For the first time, Bond actually asked, tone hushed and urgent, “What’s wrong?”

Q knew there was no point in lying. Selfishly, unrealistically, he just _wanted_ — wanted Bond to fix it, make it better, take it away. No magic at all would probably be better than this. “It hurts.”

Bond rubbed his hands lightly over Q’s arms. “It’s physical,” he observed. “It’s not just grief.”

Q gave a sharp nod.

“Can I take you to Medical?”

Q shook his head.

“Do they know?”

Panic welled in Q as he realised what Bond was getting at. “Nothing they can do. It’s fine.”

“This is not fine.”

“It’s hereditary. Mother and my aunt had it, too.”

Bond was quiet for a time, gently rubbing Q’s arms and back. Q relaxed into the touch, selfishly allowing himself, for the first time, to try and draw some of Bond’s energy. It was just the barest tug of power — just enough for Q to feel the core of strength in Bond and use it as a compass to reorient himself. The shaking stopped, and Q finally became present enough in his own body to realise he was clutching Bond’s knees hard enough to bruise. He relaxed his grip slowly. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be.” Bond sighed and relaxed against the wall, letting his head fall back with a thump. “Is it fatal?”

Q took a deep breath, readying himself to lie. But the words wouldn’t come, the deception caught in his throat. It had killed his mother, when Q’s father left. His aunt had let herself die rather than live without her husband. Partnership was essential to magical people, and without it, Q would indeed die.

“M made it much longer than this,” Bond protested, his grip on Q tightening.

“I didn’t know you knew.”

“I asked Tanner, when I saw how you reacted.”

“Sorry I didn’t tell you.”

“Don’t, Q.” It was painfully reminiscent of M, Q thought; all that was missing was the use of Q’s real name.

And a real emotional connection, Q realised. He’d been so wrapped up in the aftermath of Silva’s attack and M’s death that he’d never stopped to think about Bond’s motives. He couldn’t actually be attached — they didn’t know each other well enough for any such bond to form. Was it boredom? Curiosity? A sense of duty?

“Q?”

Bond’s voice was even more gruff this time, and it jolted Q back to an awareness of what he was doing. He was still draining Bond’s energy in a slow but steady syphoning. It wasn’t concern that was causing Bond’s voice to change inflection — it was an after-effect of the draining.

Q cursed inwardly and pulled himself away. He felt better, _much_ better, and he hated himself for it.

He had to do better than this. Maybe he needed to find himself an abandoned tunnel far, far from the centre of England’s population where he could let go of his control just long enough to burn away some of his magic. A nuclear bunker somewhere would do the trick as well. Even being fully aware of how much the fallout would probably hurt, he knew it would absolutely be worth it. It was dangerous, but less dangerous than accidentally killing one of MI6’s best agents.

“What’s wrong?” Bond asked, this time somewhat groggily. “Are you alright?” He reached for Q with uncharacteristic slowness, and Q’s stomach turned. He cursed his carelessness and shook his head.

“Not feeling well,” he lied, fumbling with the doorknob as Bond slowly rose to his feet. “Need to go home.”

Bond blinked at him hazily as Q finally wrenched the door open. “I’ll dri…”

But Q had the door closed behind him before Bond could finish his, unknown to Bond, suicidal offer.

~~~

If Mallory hadn’t been aware of supernaturals before he’d taken up the mantle of ‘M’, Q knew he’d long since been apprised of them. Witches, warlocks, werewolves, vampires, sorcerers, fae, nymphs… the world’s humanoid races were much more varied than most average _homo sapiens_ knew about. Medieval persecutions had forced most races both to the brink of extinction and into hiding, and even hundreds of years later those instincts hadn’t changed. Only certain trusted officials in certain positions of power were given any sort of knowledge at all, and even then it was both reluctantly and cautiously. The head of British Intelligence had been kept in the loop since the devastation of the merpeople in the 1970s, and in return for his genocide-stopping interventions, a pact had been made that a designated number of supernaturals would always be on staff to aid with problems uninformed humans couldn’t solve on their own. The positions were always voluntary, and the truce had been kind enough to the magical population that, as a result, MI6 had the highest number of willing magical employees of any organisation in the world.

So when Q called Mallory that night to tell him he was taking an urgent and necessary leave of absence, Mallory knew better than to question it or demand that Q justify himself. Q knew that Mallory had been observing, if not commenting on, his slow but steady descent into uselessness.

“Are you alright?” Mallory asked instead, and Q knew damn well that he was really asking if he needed to start looking for a replacement.

“I don’t know,” Q confessed. He gave Mallory the coordinates of the bunker he was going to. “I’ll be back in three days. If this works, I’ll be fine. I’ll just need to do the same thing — take a long weekend — once every few weeks.”

“Good luck then, Merrick. I’ll see you soon.”

Q smiled despite himself. “I hope so.”

~~~

Three days turned out to be a wildly optimistic guess.

~~~

When Q finally woke up, it was to the smell of burning _everything_ , the feel of sharp shocks of pain running through his entire body, and the sensation of being dragged through darkness of the tunnels.

“What happened?” Q tried to ask. But despite his best efforts the sounds that left his mouth weren’t words. The dragging sensation stopped and Q tracked the lumbering, if nearly silent, footsteps of something moving to his side. Bright yellow eyes glowed in the darkness and Q felt his heartbeat pick up wildly.

“Do not be afraid, little mage,” a distinctly not-human voice rumbled. Q struggled to turn his head far enough to get a better look, but saw nothing but muddy brown and a wide grin.

“I’m not,” Q said, realizing a split second after he said it that it was true. This creature didn’t radiate the sort of dark menace that he’d never failed to experience in the presence of a sadist. “Who are you?”

His saviour straightened, and by the new position of the glowing eyes, Q realised he wasn’t much more than three feet tall. “Who,” the creature chuckled. “I like you. Very much.” He gripped Q’s shoulders in massive, firm hands and started to drag him again. Q considered protesting, but realised it would be pointless. He couldn’t move any muscle much more than a few excruciating inches.

“I am Keenan.” The yellow glow of his eyes vanished, and Q craned his neck the little bit he was able, turning to see if the glow illuminated the tunnels. He was unsurprised to find that it didn’t.

“Your name is Keenan, or you _are_ a Keenan?”

The creature laughed. “Oh yes,” he said, quiet, gravelly voice surprisingly mirthful. “You may be a favourite.”

“Of your rescues?” Q thought about the number of people that Keenan must have rescued from the dark places of the earth over time. Given that most of them were probably ignorant humans — miners, cave divers, and the like — Q didn’t know how much of a compliment that really was. “Thank you,” he said anyway.

“I like the new M as well,” Keenan continued. “Surprisingly polite and generous.”

“That’s good to know,” Q said, allowing himself to slip back towards unconsciousness. But Keenan stopped and shook him.

“Not wise, little mage,” he chastised. “I’m leaving you at the edge of the sunlight for another of your people to retrieve. This one is uninformed. You must be awake to notify him of your location.”

Q groaned at the rough treatment, a new cascade of painful shocks coursing through his system as a result of being shaken. “Fine, fine. Just don’t do that again.”

Keenan laughed and kept walking.

~~~

With nothing better to do than wait, Bond lit up a cigarette and paced at the mouth of the tunnel. _An older nuclear bunker entrance_ , Mallory had explained. _Wait for your name to be called before going in to retrieve the target_ , he’d said. And that was it. No name, no background information — merely a set of coordinates and strict orders to retrieve the target, dead or alive, at all costs.

Bond squinted at the slowly sinking sun before glaring back at the tunnel. He _really_ didn’t want to be here, pulling god knew who or what from a nuclear bunker of all places. He wanted to be back at MI6, searching for his missing friend, or at least out on a mission that was complex and interesting enough to actually be a distraction from Q’s absence.

This? This was green-agent level _bullshit_.

After his oddly minor implosion last week, Q had completely fallen off the face of the Earth. The first day Bond failed to find Q somewhere in the drafty confines of Q Branch, he hadn’t been overly concerned. He’d assumed — wrongly, it turned out — that Q was in Medical, or a speciality centre, dealing with his illness. But one day became two became three, and none of his inquiries managed to turn up anything.

Mallory had apparently caught wind of Bond’s quiet investigations because, four days after he started stalking the admittance records of local hospitals, Mallory called him into his office. He didn’t chastise him or ask why Bond gave a rat’s arse about the new Quartermaster, but handed him this assignment as a poor excuse of a distraction.

Bond threw the burned-out cigarette to the ground and crushed it under his boot before lighting another one. He could admit to himself that he really had no idea _why_ he’d become so fixated on Q, but it didn’t actually matter. Whether it was because Q was a link to M, or because he was ill and when he was at his worst he responded to absolutely no one but Bond, or because he was Bond’s type and Bond was stupidly infatuated, or, hell, all of the above, it simply didn’t matter. Bond would figure out what the hell was going on and _fix it_.

As soon as he got this stupid little retrieval mission over with.

Finally, just as Bond was considering going into the tunnel anyway, and to hell with Mallory, he heard the rather alarming sound of something heavy being dragged through the dirt of the tunnel floor. Bond tensed and drew his weapon, moving to the side of the entryway and out of the line of sight. The dragging sound continued, growing slowly louder until Bond could hear the surprisingly jovial sound of an old song being sung quietly by a deeply-voiced man.

Bond dropped the half-smoked remains of his cigarette and silently crushed it into the dirt. The singing stopped, and Bond wondered for a brief moment if he’d given himself away. But then he heard a chuckle and more scraping sounds.

“Here you are, little mage, safe and sound,” the voice intoned affectionately. “If you ever need me, I’m at your service. You don’t have to cry out loudly for Mallory’s agent — he’s close indeed.”

The response was so quiet that by the time it reached Bond’s ears, it was more of a soft murmur than words.

Bond held still, wondering who exactly Mallory would hire to retrieve someone from an underground bunker, drag them all the way to the surface, then retreat without actually making contact. But before he could get further with that thought, a painfully dry, cracked voice called out.

“Double O?”

Bond quirked an eyebrow and carefully made his way into the tunnel. It wasn’t exactly his name — there were currently thirteen Double O agents in rotation — but it was close enough. Perhaps the unfortunate victim, or idiot, as it remained to be seen, simply hadn’t been informed which of the agents would be there to retrieve him.

“I’m here,” he said quietly, lifting a torch to scan the area. Other than a dirty, bloody lump of rather charred skin and bones near the entrance — his target, apparently — the cave was completely empty. He tucked the torch away, then the gun, as he waited for his eyes to adjust to the dimness. “Good timing too. There is only about an hour’s worth of daylight left.”

The person shifted slightly, lifting his — her? — head slightly towards the sound of Bond’s advance. “James?”

Bond’s jaw clenched in surprise and disbelief. “Q?”

 

~~~

 

Q was a mess.

His clothes, hair, and skin were singed and burned, his hands and face were smeared with blood, and dirt was _everywhere_ , encrusted so thoroughly in some of his wounds that Bond shuddered at the mere thought of how much it would hurt Q to have them cleaned.

Bond managed to keep himself quiet for the torturously long journey back to the SUV Transport had provided him with, carrying Q in a fireman’s hold despite the pressure it put on Q’s abused skin. After much juggling and more than a little cursing, Bond finally managed to get Q, who was mercifully unconscious after the rough handling, laid out in the back of the vehicle.

“What the bloody fucking hell, Q?” Bond whispered harshly as he stripped Q’s button-up free from his pliant frame. “Last time I saw you, you could hardly keep from trembling, and Mallory sends you out anyway? And you allowed him to?” Bond threw the tattered remains of the shirt aside and cursed viciously at the charred state of the undershirt. “What the _hell_ happened? If you wake up and tell me anything less than that you were experimenting with the best modern technology has to offer in an effort to open the gates of hell, I’ll be sorely disappointed.”

Q didn’t suddenly wake for a well-timed bout of consciousness and wit, so Bond spent the next several minutes silently attending to Q’s wounds. He took only as long as required to ensure there was no obvious serious damage, then strapped him in before heading back to headquarters.

~~~

“First degree burns, a few spots of infection, some deep-tissue bruising — nothing significant, if a little excessive,” Q informed Bond dispassionately, perhaps even cheerfully. “I’m fine.”

“Fine?” Bond retorted. Q looked considerably cleaner and less mangled, but still sported marks and burns that barely peeked out from under his cuffs, collar, and hair. The lack of interest from his staff in the lab didn’t surprised Bond — it wasn’t unusual for an engineer to show up in less than pristine condition after an absence — and Bond himself fondly remembered the painful but proudly-worn battle scars Q’s predecessor, Major Boothroyd, sometimes flaunted. Singed eyebrows certainly weren’t the worst of it, but… but this time? Bond wasn’t sure he’d gotten over the shock of how he’d felt when he’d pulled Q out of the cave.

“Shhhh!!!!” Q hissed as he looked around at his crew to see if they’d noticed. They hadn’t, bless their single-minded focus on their work. “Do you mind?”

“You know what I mind?” Bond continued in a quieter but still firm voice. He grabbed Q by the upper arm and steered him toward one of the static-free, wave-free experiment rooms in the back. “I mind being lied to by my coworkers. I know injuries, Q, and it seems extremely unlikely that yours are the result of some experimental engineering gone wrong.”

“What do you mean?” Q asked, eyes wide with disingenuous innocence.

“You’re not just a tech anymore, and yet you were in the bunker alone, without even a single guard to ensure your safety. There haven’t been any attempts to recover any technology. And even if you _had_ managed to blow everything up rather spectacularly, a cleaner team would have been dispatched to make sure that every single wire was recovered rather than risk classified technology, however extra crispy, from falling into unauthorised hands.”

It left Bond without any viable explanations for the events that had led to Q’s incapacitation, and that made him twitchy with unease.

“Are you jealous I didn’t take you on my field trip with me?”

Bond pulled him into the clean room and shut the door behind them. He flicked the switch to light the windowless, vacuum-sealed excuse for a closet with red LEDs, crossed his arms, and waited.

“It isn’t healthy, this odd but intense interest in my welfare,” Q said. He tugged on his sweater — a rust-colored monstrosity whose appearance wasn’t improved in the current lighting. “Checking in on me constantly, using any excuse to pull me away from Q Branch.”

“Your hands shake constantly, you are never not exhausted, and sometimes you forget where you are,” Bond pointed out.

“Not lately,” Q pointed out.

“Yes, your little encounter with hell seems to have done something for you,” Bond admitted reluctantly, “but it’s been a week and you’re back to getting worse again.”

Q’s placid expression went sad and sharp, and Bond’s frustration threatened to boil over.

“Just tell me!”

“It was an experiment,” Q said. He held up his hand when Bond opened his mouth to argue, and continued. “A reckless but necessary release of tightly controlled energies. And it worked. Aside from the niggling ache of minor burns, I feel good. _Damn_ good.”

“Energies,” Bond repeated.

“Yes. But you’re right, it only worked for a short while, and, unfortunately, the recovery time doesn’t make it a viable long term solution.”

“Solution to _what_?”

Q sighed and met Bond’s gaze. “Sit down.”

It was habit, by now, to sit with his back to the wall, legs spread in invitation. Q settled between them, back pressed to Bond’s front, and pulled Bond’s hands to rest on the tops of Q’s thighs.

“Now watch.”

Q snapped his fingers, and a spark burst into life. It burned like a little candle flame, cradled between Q’s thumb and middle finger.

“What the _hell_?”

“Just watch. And feel.”

Bond kept his mouth shut and watched as the flame grew and grew, soon becoming a writhing mass of wicked fire in the palm of Q’s hand. The bigger it got, the less tense Q’s body became. But the tradeoff seemed to be one of control — the more Q relaxed, the more chaotic the flames became, twisting and sparking and seemingly desperate to be released.

Then something pulled at Bond, a weird slip of energy that he only noticed because Q asked him to _feel_. It didn’t hurt, but it felt like getting tired. The flames settled in Q’s hand, become stronger but almost lazy in the way they burned.

Bond wasn’t an idiot. He’d been around the world, in some of the most unimaginable situations, to know there were _others_. People who weren’t just human, but maybe something more. He’d never experienced a blatant display of power like this, but his encounters were enough to prevent shock or disbelief. He could focus on the implications of what Q was showing him — of what he was trying to explain.

“Here,” Bond said, pulling him backwards. Their recline became an embrace, and he slid his free hand, rough and callused but strong, up from Q’s thigh, to his hip, and up over his abdomen to his throat. He pressed down just enough that Q swallowed against the pressure, pulse beating a slow, lazy rhythm under Bond’s fingertips. The flames didn’t shrink, but they sort of… melted, dripping down through Q’s fingertips to vanish before they hit the floor.

“How did you know?”

“I didn’t,” Bond said. The energy siphoning had stopped, and Q seemed… replenished. He’d stopped shaking, and even the burn marks on his skin seemed to have faded some more. “But I’m pretty good at making intuitive leaps.”

“Most people thinking that taking energy from someone else would mean more magic, not less.”

“I know better than most how much energy self-control takes.” Bond watched as Q pulled away, then turned to face him. “Why didn’t you ask earlier? I would have helped you.”

“It’s more than just this,” Q said, eyes downcast. “An exchange of energies isn’t a simple transaction.”

“Felt like it to me,” Bond said. “Transaction might be too cold of a word, pun not intended.”

Q laughed, then sobered quickly. “I’ve never done this before.”

“Then start simple. Explain. From the beginning. Who you are, what you can do, what you need.”

“Who I am?” Q asked, startled enough into looking up and meeting Bond’s gaze. His pupils started glowing, then became molten white rings of heat. It was enchanting and, Bond could admit to himself, really fucking exciting. “Not what I am?”

Bond smirked and reached out to grasp Q’s hands in his own. “I want to know everything.”

For the first time in what felt like months, Q’s smile was genuine and promising. “All right.”

 


End file.
